In a framework where whistleblowers are not protected, but are instead charged for some other minor offence, or sidelined, it is totally healthy to argue for a more transparent and open environment.
Therefore, I fully agree with Tunku Abdul Aziz\’s thesis in New Straits Times last Saturday that \”there is no accountability without transparency.\”
The more pertinent question that comes up is why should there even be an OSA (Officials Secrets Act) related to what are obviously a public interest issue and not a national security issue?
For all civil servants; they know the difference between documents that are \’confidential\’, \’secret\’ and \’top secret\’ (or rahsia besar).
Can OSA be applied to all documents despite the governments\’ own classification?
And especially where there is clear conflict of interest between decision makers, or where actions can be considered illegal acts?
Can the OSA be used to protect what is considered illegal or an obvious failure of fiduciary by those responsible? From my understanding of the law there can be no legal redress or protection for what is considered illegal by law.
As Tunku Aziz and I have argued now, what is the national interest for secretiveness especially related to the LDP toll rates via its privatization?
What is rahsia?
In fact, to my knowledge, even a Cabinet paper is only \’rahsia\’ until it is presented to Cabinet.
After it is presented, it should theoretically not be \’rahsia\’ any more, since it now a matter of public policy.
The only real exceptions are real national secrets, which may not even reach the Cabinet level, under our need to know principle.
For that matter, I am told that in Sweden every public document (presumably other than national secrets) is available for public scrutiny. That may be why Sweden is one of the leading Knowledge Economies in the world.
Development and progress must mean both openness and transparency. Opaqueness must remain a two-thirds-world or developing world phenomenon. Or, even as the PM has popularized it, it is a third class mentality within a context of first world infrastructure.
Transparency also means that everything is done right while non transparency would mean that there is something to hide and therefore it is not for public knowledge.
Therefore, to support greater transparency and knowledge of reality on the ground, in terms of transparency and openness, allow me to relate my experiences with a real life whistle-blower who wants to remain invisible for now.
Corruption at DBKL
My business friend recently sat two of us down and gave a blow-by-blow account of how corruption takes place at KL City Hall, and by generalization, he believes that all local authorities behave in the same way.
After all, the developers are dealing with all of them, most of the time. Since he has requested not to be identified, I will consider the information given to me as privileged information between \”two friends\” and keep his identity secret.
But, his story needs to be told, as I really believe that my two other friends, Abdul Hakim Borhan, the Mayor of KL and Mohd Sidek Hassan, the Chief Secretary need to hear them.
I believe they would and should be interested in the storyline; if nothing else to check them out personally. Moreover, my business friend gave this advice to me, after he first read about the creation of Pemudah, the 23 person Task Force set up by the PM to improve public service delivery.
So, this advice goes to both public service individuals and Yong Poh Kon, the FMM joint-Chairman, who exist to serve the public interest, while still preserving and seeking the national interest.
Therefore, below is a business practitioner\’s account about how to get rid of corruption and improve the public service delivery systems.
First, my friend advices that the Task Force should begin their focus of attention with the most corrupt places.
To his mind and experience they are the police force, the local authorities and the land office. If these agencies are made more transparent and less corrupt the rest would follow, as a matter of course.
Most corruption surveys do highlight them. And change theory suggests that if we can get the first 23 percent change, the rest will happen by sheer momentum of the change effects.
Since, police-bashing is already a popular sport for now, and I am not very familiar with the inside operations of a land office, let me simply relate the modus operandi of KL City Hall based on first-hand experience from what I heard. I am only the scribe.
Under the table payments
My friend is in the property development business. To start with he illustrated his arguments of the effects of delay and corruption by a simple model for purpose of illustration. Taking a property development where the land is RM30 million; the annual interest rate or forgone profit to the developer per year at 10 percent or RM 3 million or RM250,000 per month.
To this cost the developer would have to add his staff cost that he estimated at RM300,000 a month. Thus any delay would mean a cost of RM550,000 per month to the developer.
Most projects would take between 3-5 years depending on the status of the land. As any delay would not only increase the developers risk and his cost; it is therefore in the interest of the developer to expedite any approval for the development of his land.
To facilitate the approvals for development in my friend\’s conservative estimate is a minimum of about 15 percent of the total costs of the housing project.
Now, if one extrapolates that 15 percent to every development project in the country, facilitation means payments \”under the table\” to those that are directly and indirectly involved in approving the project at the different stages that the project has to be referred to and where approval is needed.
One can only imagine the costs of inefficiency to the nation by a housing development project being delayed because of approvals. This cost is borne by the buyer of the houses and at the level of payment of corporate tax the government which indirectly means the Malaysian public; due to the decrease in profits of the developer he pays less tax.
The loss in tax can be easily calculated as indicated by my friend. Simply take the total value of the construction industry and multiply this number by fifteen percent and then by twenty eight percent as the lost in tax revenue to the government as the result of the payments due to delays of approvals.
He then goes on to describe his normal experience with KL City Hall. He says that the layout plans could take anything from 2 weeks to 2 years. He asks why such a difference in the range and timing?
Can\’t the process be done on a fixed timeline? He says the system is inefficient because what can be done concurrently is done linearly.
He says he has to pay at each step of the process and an average of RM3000 to RM5000.
This type of payment happens to many officers, and not just the ones you meet and they approve each step.
The drainage and infrastructure alone takes 3 to 6 months with three to four site visits, free meals and further payments to each inspector.
He quotes another experience with trying to secure electricity lines and services. He recounts visiting no less than three offices and at least 36 times.
Even then it finally took him losing his temper and going to see the big boss through his own connections to get the final approval. He has a \”Dato\” title and therefore gets a little more of a sympathetic reception when he uses his title.
The kind and quality of delay and inefficiency that my friend describes is the norm out there.
When a gift is a bribe
So, if we really want to get rid of corruption; according to my friend, we need more fundamental and radical steps before real changes begin to happen.
What the honest staff of the City Hall say is \”apa yang betul sudah jadi salah dan apa yang salah sudah jadi betul\”.
I agree. It is therefore necessary to make the \”betul,\” really betul and the \”salah,\” really salah.
Therefore, for every day of delay, there are many and real practical costs to the developer and that makes the developer very vulnerable to pay for any promise to expedite the process.
It simply makes business sense. Especially, if one takes the philosophy and advice of my other friend\’s father-in-law who told him the following: \”when a gift is given to the royalty it is called a cenderamata; to the broker it is a commission; to the religious head it is a \”sedekah\”; and to the politician it is a \”hadiah\” but to the public servant it \”rasuah.\”
Thereby, for many a big and small businessmen, greasing the system is merely applying some lubricants to smoothen operations; it is not even viewed as corruption!
How then do we deal with such systemic inefficiency which breeds and feeds corruption?
My businessman friend\’s answer: create and make transparent processes, with clear and obvious process deadlines for everyone to know, and follow.
Any good government operation will have identified laws and due process regulations to follow, in order to get a predefined method of approval.
According to my friend also, there are already some good and very transparent processes and practices in place; if any one wants to follow them in the government.
For example, he quotes the Miti\’s Textile Unit and the related process for approvals for either imports or exports.
They have a very standardized form, clearly identified processes and pre-defined timelines for approvals.
To top it all, they have a very efficient and effective call center that is able to give answer to every query for the due process of each application.
My friend simply asks, \”Why this cannot be done for every other government approval process?\”
Another super efficient office he talks about is at the Ministry of Local Government\’s 4th floor Damansara Office.
They have every process stage marked and displayed, including the steps and time taken for each step.
According to my friend, there is also very good and high level of compliance.
Good scheme dropped
I think he is right with his question and the Task Force called Pemudah may have to answer his query.
Why can\’t the government emulate those agencies that have already a good delivery system?
Why is there a need for another group to sit and revisit what is already done? Why can\’t they penalize those that take undue time to give the same approvals that had been done for many years?
Nothing is really new in any of these cases which requires 23 people to sit down to improve the delivery system?
For the public they only want a delivery system like those at the Immigration and the Registration Departments; use these as examples and provide incentives to civil servants when they demonstrate that they can improve their systems.
Coming back to the housing development approvals, in fact, when I worked at the NITC Secretariat, the Demonstrator Application Grants Scheme approved a proposal called the electronic approval for the submission of building plans.
The project submitted by Asiabuild Online Sdn Bhd was called a Virtual Approval Environment or VAE.
The demonstration project was piloted at Sepang Disctrict Council and it was proven that by its adoption that an average application approval could be reduced to about 23 days from an average of more than 300 days; because of the virtual and concurrent processing of the plans and submissions.
After it was demonstrated and approved by all the relevant authorities in Selangor, including the state exco for statewide application by 2007; it was a shock to me to find out very recently that the project is now effectively dead!
Why, I do not know, but I am very keen to understand why and would like in fact to request the Pemudah Team to review and explain why such a proven system cannot be implemented in all 145 local authorities by the federal government; if we are really serious about corruption.
Or is it that whenever an efficient system works it is not to the interest for those who collect and that there is more \”talk\” than \”walk?\”
Killing the goose
In the early 1980s, during our time at Intan, a team of us developed what was then called a productivity measurement program.
Again one of the focal groups was local authorities. At the end of the pilot stage of that program, we concluded that any real and significant productivity change in the public services must involve three levels of real and meaningful change:
1. Political will by those in power and authority,
2. Technical Skill by the constituent technical officers, and
3. A viable and practicable business sustainability strategy.
The Virtual Approval Environment project had all three of the above ingredients for success, but it baffles me as to why the project was never implemented even in then most so-called developed state in Malaysia.
Asiabuild Online had offered to undertake the full implementation for a token payment of RM1 and a concession period of ten years!
Maybe, based on my friend\’s estimate; the 15 percent cost of inefficiency involved in lubricating the system is an obvious big factor.
After all with that amount of money floating around in the system, there are many little and big Napoleons who may be earning from feeding off of the system.
Why then does anyone want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg without any feed to the goose but being fed by all the golden geese!
